Q12 - For years, university administrators

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Strengthen

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: There will not be an imminent shortage of scientists and engineers.
Evidence: Unemployment is comparable to other industries, and there's little upward pressure on salaries.

Answer Anticipation:
The author's evidence is suggesting that there is NOT scarcity. If scientists/engineers were in great demand (too little supply), then their salaries would be going up in order to attract more candidates. Furthermore, it's not like there are more job vacancies in science/engineering than in other fields (comparable unemployment rate).

We need either MORE EVIDENCE that there are ample scientists/engineers to fill desired roles or we need to RULE OUT OBJECTIONS that the current static salaries and normal unemployment might be due to something OTHER than ample supply of workers.

Correct Answer:
C

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Since universities/corporations/govt are all lumped together in the question of "will there be a shortage", it seems out of scope to address how the pie gets divvied among the three categories.

(B) It's not established whether science/engineering offers some prospect of financial success. The fact that there's little upward pressure on salaries doesn't tell us whether those salaries are currently at low vs. high paying levels.

(C) Sure! This seems to just give us another reason to feel better about "There will not be a shortage of scientists/engineers". Even if the fields are currently well supplied, we might worry about whether there's a new generation of students getting ready to replace them. According to (C), there is!

(D) This wishy-washy answer cancels out to do nothing. There's no clear sense whether we should lean towards thinking there's a surplus or a deficit of labor.

(E) Okay … what does this have to do with assessing whether there will be a shortage of scientists/engineers? Continual re-training is out of scope.

Takeaway/Pattern: This correct answer has very little to do with bridging the gap between ideas. It mainly sounds like independent support for the conclusion, like a way to make more plausible the claim that "there will NOT be an imminent shortage of scientists and engineers." It's fair to say, though, that the author has to assume "if there is currently an adequate supply of scientists and engineers, then we can feel good that there will be an adequate supply in the future." Our correct answer is supporting that assumption.

#officialexplanation

[Jdanz653]

This question gave me a little bit of trouble during timed conditions luckily I was able to get to the answer choice by POE.

Question type: Strengthen. So our task is to make the argument more plausible.

Background: Corporations, university admins, and government have made predictions that there will be a devastating shortage of scientists and engineers

P1: Little upward pressure on on the salaries of scientists and engineers and the unemployment rate for these professions are just as high as any other field

Conc: These predictions are not coming true

A: States that out of all the research being done in these fields, corporations are doing more of it now compared to five years ago. The proportion of research that corporations do really doesn't tell us whether or not it's plausible that shortages will not occur. We would really have to assume that the proportion of research done by corps would play a role in the likelihood of shortages, which seems like it would take too many leaps in logic to justify. Eliminate.

B: States that most students decide to study fields that offer some chance of financial success. This is just too weak. We don't really even know whether or not these particular fields offer a chance of financial success. The only thing we are told about the wages of these fields is that they are experiencing little upward pressure, nothing else. Besides there could be multiple fields that offer this as well so science and engineering could still have a lack of shortage due to people selecting other careers. Eliminate

C: Basically says students in science and engineering has increased a lot in the past five years. This looks good! It stands to reason that if more students are studying the subjects, eventually more will actually enter the field, thereby reducing the likelihood of a shortage. Admittedly I was a little hesitant about this answer choice because it did not seem strong enough, and the stimulus didn't really allude to schooling and how it would impact the shortage. However, common sense tells us that a significant amount of more people studying a particular field could decrease the likelihood of shortages, so this answer works.

D: States that some specializations of science and engineering have too much labor while others have too little. This could be the case, but tells us nothing about the overall state of these fields as a whole. Maybe these specializations are so small that shortages would not lead to a "catastrophic" incident or maybe they are so large that they would. Regardless, we don't know so eliminate

E: States that knowledge learned in these fields need to be kept current so retraining occurs. Okay, but this does not tell us why shortages are unlikely to occur. Who knows, maybe this retraining is so burdensome that it deters people from entering the field. Eliminate.

Like I said, this question gave me a bit of trouble so please let me know if my reasoning is not sound for any of the answer choices.

[ganbayou]

I was not sure about C because even thought the number is increasing, they may not end up becoming scientists or engineer...I thought we would need additional assumption but is it because its asking the best answer, this one is the right one?

[kkate]

I was not sure about C because even thought the number is increasing, they may not end up becoming scientists or engineer...I thought we would need additional assumption but is it because its asking the best answer, this one is the right one?

Not necessarily because it's asking for the best answer; even if the question is worded to think this way - "which one of the following would, if true, most strengthen..." - there is only one answer that strengthens and four that do not. This is why elimination process helps especially if you can't identify right away - you eliminate the four that do not strengthen. Also, keep in mind that even if the answer strengthens by 1%, it still DOES strengthen. It does not need to make the argument airtight entirely.

The way I like to think is:
For strengthen question, the gap can be filled by the correct answer choice in the range from 1%-100%.
For sufficient, the gap must have to be filled 100% by the correct answer choice.